


To Love You

by storiedsilence



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 16:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12486076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiedsilence/pseuds/storiedsilence
Summary: Sakura has always loved him. After everything he's done and after everything he threw away, she still loves him in some corner of her heart. But after the Fourth Great Ninja War, and when he finally returns for what should feel like forever, she can't bring herself to believe that things will be any different. Because Sasuke could never fathom—how hard it is to love him.my take on Sakura and Sasuke's story the end of the manga between chapter 699 and 700!





	1. Chapter 1

“Sneaking off already?” Sakura asked. She leaned against the doorframe and flicked the light switch on.

The room flooded with brightness and Sasuke’s lean form, swathed in a navy cloak and hood, was revealed to her bleary, sleep-worn eyes.

He stiffened. Sasuke was never one to act like the deer caught in headlights, no, he was too damn sophisticated and unfeeling for that. Nothing fazed him, and naturally, neither did her sudden appearance. He simply slipped the kunai he’d been holding into a holster on his belt and turned to face her.

“Go back to sleep.”

Sakura wrapped her arms tighter around her body. She tried to cover what she could of her chest since she wasn’t wearing her bra underneath; she’d gotten up from bed so suddenly at the sound of his creaking bedroom door that she hadn’t given a thought to her attire. She was wearing a very scant gold nightgown that barely covered her thighs; if Sasuke had any thoughts about it, he didn’t give them away. He just stared at her stone-faced and brooding.

Oh, she hated it when he brooded.

It made having him back in Konoha the past two weeks, infinitely frustrating. Ever since the Fourth Ninja War ended, and Kakashi became the sixth hokage, pardoning Sasuke of his previous transgressions, Sasuke had been living in her home.

It hadn’t been an intentional decision, just a practical one.

The Uchiha clan households had all been destroyed long ago, and Naruto’s own solitary home had been brought down to rubble by Madara’s antics in the war. Once the war ended and he was out of the hospital, Naruto had begun staying in the vast Hyuga clan household, where Hinata (under Sakura’s direction) kept a weather eye on him and his new prosthetic arm.

Meanwhile, Sasuke, with no home, and with no sane person willing to let him stay in their home after everything he’d done, had no choice but to come and stay with Sakura in one of the small houses her family owned, which was one of the few of the houses in the village to actually survive the war, besides the Hyuga’s.

It hadn’t been a very eventful two weeks. Sasuke had barely been in her home. He’d been in the hospital for the first week, along with Naruto, recovering after the amount of damage they’d done to each other. Sakura didn’t even have to lift a finger, Tsunade and Kakashi had pulled a tag team lecture on them both, ordering that they stay in bed for at least three days. Afterwards, it had been slight physical therapy for them both. As a medical ninja, and their friend, Sakura was there every day, even though they had infinite reserves of energy, and were easily on their feet by the fourth day, their arms were in less than stellar condition. Without an arm, Naruto was clumsier than ever, and Sasuke…he needed more help than he wanted to admit or ever let on.

Unable to perform jutsu, or do basic tasks, the pair of them were as useless as a pile of rubble. Tsunade had gotten them both exercising the nerves on their severed arms, making sure they had maximum functionality before fitting them for the prosthetic arms that she would grow from Hashirama’s cells. It had been a mere two nights ago that the arms had fully grown and Tsunade attached them to the boys. And tonight, marked the first night Sasuke would be physically _sleeping_ and not just “staying” in her house.

And here he was, already poised to leave.

“You’re one to talk. You should be in bed, not waltzing off in the middle of the night to do God knows what when you’ve only _just_ got back your arm!” Sakura nearly yelled. Her arms had left her chest and her fingers balled in fists by her sides. This was just like Sasuke. To go _looking_ for danger, for a fight. He would never be satisfied being idle. He never had been.

He stared at her.

“You can’t honestly be leaving for good right now, are you?” Sakura’s voice caught on those last words. She looked away, a knot forming in her throat. It wasn’t that she hadn’t suspected he’d do something like this. If there was anything she was sure of, it was that Sasuke would always be leaving. She had just hoped that this time would be—different.

Sasuke shifted, after so long in one position. His gaze flipped down as he said, “No. I’m not.”

“Oh,” Sakura let out a breath, more relieved than she realized. She straightened. “Then what are you doing with your cloak on? And that kunai?”

Sasuke glanced at the kunai he’d holstered. His eyes met hers again, one infinitely black, the other, hypnotic rings of silver. She still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of his rinnegan. She still remembered the boy Sasuke had been years ago, with two completely black eyes. Before he left. Before everything that had ripped them all apart.

“It’s none of your concern,” he said as if by automatic response. So quick and sudden that the sharpness had Sakura reeling.

She stepped back, the blow sinking in. “None of my concern?” She bowed her head, letting her hair cover her eyes and her view of him. “Right. Of course it’s not my concern. You always liked doing everything by yourself anyways.” She stepped out the door frame towards her bedroom, but stopped to say, “You may not care what I think, but that prosthetic will be fragile in the first few weeks. Push it too hard right now, and you’ll destroy its functionality.”

A silence. Believing the conversation over, Sakura moved to leave.

“Then how can I get back my strength? Without destroying my arm again?” he asked. His voice was almost… _tentative_.

Sakura pursed her lips. “You’d have to train without using your left arm first, allow it time to heal, and then start simple and build up with movements in the prosthetic,” she said honestly. She and Tsunade had been industriously working on the development of the prosthetics; there was nothing she didn’t know about their development.

Then she shook her head. “But even training using your real arm, you’d need someone to monitor the prosthetic in the first few weeks. We don’t know the full extent of what Hashirama’s cells can do. For all we know, you could reject the prosthetic or it could be atrophying your nerves this very moment and eventually become a dead weight. The best course of action is to let it be and heal.”

“So you’re saying I need someone to monitor the arm while I train?”

Sakura bristled, “No! Are you not hearing me? I’m saying you shouldn’t exert yourself, before you lose your arm!”

Sasuke stepped toward her. “Yes, but you also said that I _could_ essentially build up my strength, if I had someone to watch over the arm.”

“That’s not the point—”

He cut her off. “Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”

 

 

The night air was chilly and biting as Sasuke and Sakura pulled up into a wide expanse by the forest behind her house. Owned previously by one of her shinobi relatives, various training equipment littered the grass. “What are we doing here?”

“Training,” he said. He unclasped his cloak, letting it drop to the ground, revealing his black training shirt which uncovered his arms, allowing them the freedom to move, but also displaying he harsh scar tissue of where his real arm ended and the prosthetic, wrapped in bandages, began.

“I figured as much from what you said before. I _mean_ —what are we doing training in the middle of the night?” Sakura demanded.

Sasuke seemed pensive. He looked up at the moon, high in the air at this time of night, waxing as it provided what little light it could. The stars were nowhere in sight, as if they’d been scared off by Sasuke’s ever-present scowl. But, when Sakura looked at him now, Sasuke did not wear his frown and neither were his eyebrows drawn low over his eyes. Instead, a sight rare to behold, he looked relaxed, as if standing under this solitary glow was the only time in his day he ever felt at peace.

“I prefer the nighttime,” he said. Grabbing the pack of training weapons from her hands and throwing it to the ground, he forced her to follow him to one of the standing wood dummies that were scattered around the field.

He pointed at it. “If I start hitting this with my real arm, will it hurt the prosthetic one?”

Sakura glanced at the dummy. “I don’t think it should, but I’d advise holding the prosthetic behind your back for the few goes.”

Sasuke nodded. He stepped up to the dummy, staring it down as if it were an attacker. He laid a swift blow to the mid-section of the dummy, then swinging his forearm up to hit the first jutting arm of the dummy. He repeated this, moving his forearm down and up and around the jutting arms, with a stagnant position to his feet. Once he got the rhythm of the motions, he began incorporating footwork, sidestepping and dashing around the dummy.

Sakura hadn’t realized she’d been staring until Sasuke suddenly stopped moving and threw her blank stare.

“Oh, I—uh, should I guess check your arm. To see if the physical exertion is causing any damage so early in the process…” Sakura trailed off, approaching him warily. Her fingers curled as he extended his arm for her to examine. Her hands hovered over the spot where the prosthetic and his real arm connected and met. And yet, for some odd reason, she couldn’t bring herself to _touch_ him.

“Yup! I think it’s fine! You know what, I should just go. You look like you’re doing fine on your own,” she said, scrambling excuses together and making to leave him. But she was stopped by the arm she had just examined as she tried to get past him.

He bent his head near hers and flicked his wrist as if to say— _step back_. _Wait._

Unable to resist that kind of silent command, she stepped back. Sasuke had a curious expression on his face—amused even. He gestured with his eyes to the dummy.

Sakura pointed a finger at the dummy and then at herself. “You want me to fight the dummy?”

Sasuke nodded.

She rolled her eyes. “You may not have noticed, but I’m a jounin level shinobi. I can shatter the earth beneath us with a single _finger_. I don’t need to fight a dummy.”

He shook his head. Then, out of nowhere, he grabbed her arm and swung her in front of the dummy. “Hit it.”

She sighed, ignoring the still laden sensation of his cold fingers on her arm. She raised an arm and punched the dummy, _hard_. The resounding impact was loud in the night air, but Sasuke was unsatisfied. He flicked his chin at the dummy. “Hit it again.”

“Why?” she demanded.

He didn’t reply.

Sakura gave up trying to get answers for his stupid behaviour and imagined his head, his annoying expressionless face, on the dummy’s torso. A target worth hitting. This time, she punched the dummy _hard,_ enough that the wood began to splinter and the bones in her hand groaned under the pressure.

She looked at him expectantly.

Sasuke shook his head. “You lack precision, which, for a medical ninja is ridiculous. Your hits shouldn’t be blatant displays of power. They should be calculated and sharp. You shouldn’t seek to bruise your enemies; you should try to incapacitate them.”

_Incapacitate_. She remembered a time when he had done exactly that to her, the night he left Konoha for the first time to follow Orochimaru’s croonies, the night all had gone to hell, the night he hadn’t wanted her to follow.

"Stand in front of the dummy,” he ordered. She shifted to face it. She’d barely gotten her footing when he slammed his leg on the insides of her ankles, pushing them apart. “Take a wide-stance and ground yourself.”

Sakura suppressed a curse, one that would have gladly flown out if this had been Naruto, ordering her around. Sasuke was a different story altogether. She didn’t know how long this attention would last, and she was ashamed to realize that she didn’t want it to end.

Sasuke stopped hovering and stood beside her, mirroring her pose, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent. He pulled his hand up to block his face, waiting until she did the same. Then he struck out, with his right arm (the real one) with an open palm, hitting the imaginary dummy in front of him with the edge of his hand. He straightened. “Your turn.”

Unfurling her fists, she whipped out her arm to connect with the wood. Her hit wasn’t as perfect as his was, but it was much more controlled than her punches from before.

Sasuke nodded. Resuming his stance, he showed her how to weave her forearms in and around the jutting arms, while still hitting it with the same force and accuracy. He took her through the motions, demonstrating slowly, and then speeding up gradually.

However, Sakura severely lacked the same skill with the dummy as he did. “I think I’ve got the hang of this—OW!” She nearly swore as she nursed her elbow, which she had just brought slamming into the wood by a slip of concentration.

Focused on the tingling in her funny bone, Sakura didn’t realize it when Sasuke moved, shifting his body behind her, and putting his arms out on either side of her body. She was essentially trapped between the wooden dummy and the cocoon of his making.

She shivered as his breath tickled he neck. “You have to pay attention. Don’t let success or external elements distract you. Focus on your movements and the impact you want to deal out.”

Sakura wasn’t sure if Sasuke was doing it deliberately or not, standing so close to her and talking about not getting distracted, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of turning into a bumbling mess, that was who she’d been _before_ he left. She was a different person now.

Focusing her gaze on the dummy she repeated the motions again. Sasuke did them with her, moving his arms on either side of her. She was quite successful, until Sasuke decided to take things up a notch. He had her shifting the rest of her body now. Each time he wanted her to duck, lean or shift her torso, he moved with her. They weren’t touching, but Sakura felt like the fraction of space between her back and his chest was undoubtedly electrifying.

“Now, for your footwork,” he declared. Knocking her ankles again with his foot, he got her to bring them closer together for easier and quicker movements. He always kept his left foot behind her in the gap between her feet, his right leg on the right of hers. This way, when they mirrored movements, he did not crash in to her.

Dancing around the dummy, they went at it for a long time. Weaving in and out, moving like one being, one entity. It was a sensation Sakura had never experienced before. She had trained with Tsunade and Shizune, and Kakashi before that, but never something so—intimate, never something that connected her to her trainer like she was to Sasuke in those moments.

Eventually, Sasuke extracted himself from behind her and let her tackle the dummy by herself. Sweating profusely and with the chilly air freezing the film of perspiration on her skin, Sakura was ready to run back inside to the warmth of her bed, but she kept herself out there under the moonlight so that she wouldn’t have to face the smirk on his face when he saw that she called it quits. She was not a quitter and she certainly wouldn’t let Sasuke be the one to show her how insignificant she was. But the training took a toll on her and Sasuke began to notice. Her freedom was short-lived when he appeared behind her again and put a hand on each side of her waist, setting aflame the skin beneath her top with his touch.

His voice was hoarse from the cold air, and his breath was maddeningly hot on her skin as he said, “You need to rotate your hips. That’s where you’ll get the most power and movement. Understand?”

Sakura didn’t trust herself to speak in this position so she just nodded. Mute.

Sasuke lingered for a moment. A hesitation, a moment of thought—she didn’t know what, but it was almost as if he stopped being aloof for a moment and wanted to stay there next to her. Of course, this was a foolish thought and Sakura knew it the moment he stepped away from her, grabbing his abandoned cloak on the ground and walking away.

He called over his shoulder like some passer-by. “I think it’s time you went to bed.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re on break,” Kakashi announced in the dining room

“What?!” Sakura exclaimed. “What do mean _break_?”

Sasuke stood by the fridge, oddly interested in his bowl of cereal while Sakura hovered over the dining table where Kakashi sat in the garb of the hokage declaring that she could not go to work, and therefore on any missions, for the next month.

“Sasuke, can you give us the room?” Kakashi asked, without taking his eyes off the enraged Sakura.

Sasuke said nothing as he walked off into another part of the house. They’d been having such a pleasant breakfast—or whatever passed for pleasant when it came to Sasuke and his ever-present silence, when Kakashi crashed the meal to give this little tidbit of inconvenient information.

With the click of the door and Sasuke gone, Kakashi looked at Sakura with _both_ of his eyes. She would never get used to seeing them both so often. After the war Kakashi had stopped covering his left eye with his headband, and began looking at the world with a wider perspective. Sakura guessed that’s what made him the perfect set of eyes for their village right now. Though, in this particular moment, she wasn’t completely convinced.

“Sakura, I know you’re angry—”

“Of course I am! How in the world do you think I could just leave my job as a medical ninja and just _not_ _do anything_ for a _month_? I don’t _need_ a break! I wasn’t even injured that badly in the war!” Sakura yelled, pacing about the room.

Kakashi put out two calming arms. “Sakura, listen to me. This isn’t about your abilities or your injuries. We’ve all been through a lot these past _years,_ not just this war, and I think you and Naruto of all people need at least a _short_ break, so I’m giving it to you.”

“Kakashi-sensei, I’m telling you I’m fine. Yes, a lot has happened—what with Pein, and Obito, and Madara, and Kaguya, and the Sage of Six Paths, and Sasuke…but that doesn’t mean I need to stop _working_ , even if it’s just for a while. Everyone is working to rebuild the village and right the wrongs of the past years, I should be too.”

“I’m not saying you can’t do that, Sakura. I’m just saying that I don’t want you out of this village for missions. I want you to stay here and help with what you can _here_ ,” Kakashi said. The inexplicable emphasis he put on that last word— _here_ —made Sakura pause. _What was Kakashi getting at?_

He put a hand on her shoulder. “I want what’s best for you and for right now I think that’s if you took some time off.” He stepped forward, pulling her into sudden hug. Sakura stiffened at the unexpectedness.

“I need you to keep an eye on Sasuke, make sure he doesn’t leave the village,” Kakashi whispered in her ear.

Sakura felt her mind click. That explained Kakashi’s strange order. “He’s not a danger to the village anymore. You pardoned him of his crimes yourself,” she said.

Kakashi patted her back. “I worry about the danger he is to himself, _more_ than the danger he is to others. Just watch out for him for a while, will you? Just until he settles.”

Sakura realized it would seem suspicious if Sasuke were listening in and noticed how long this hug had been going on, so she saved her thoughts and arguments for later and merely nodded her consent. Kakashi drew away from her and gave her a stern nod, before breaking out into a grin. “If you ever get bored during your break, you’re welcome to borrow one of my books!” He laughed, walking out the door, calling a farewell to Sasuke as he left.

Sasuke returned to the dining room shortly afterwards, a mug in hand, his eyes peeking over the rim. “So, what did you guys talk about?” he asked.

Sakura rolled her eyes and slammed her cup on the table, letting juice spill over the edges as she got up. “I’m going out for a walk.”

She grabbed her coat for the chilly morning air and stalked out the house before Sasuke could utter another word.

 

 

“Stupid. Idiot. Good for nothing, JERK,” Sakura muttered under her breath.

“Trouble with your new housemate, Sakura?”

Standing at the next bend in the road was Naruto, leaning against a lamppost in all black as opposed to his usually cheerful shade of orange.

“Naruto, get out of my way,” Sakura said, pushing him aside like a sliding door, as if he hadn’t just saved the whole village and gotten himself stitched back together by Tsunade like Sasuke had been.

“He’s that bad, huh?” Naruto asked with a sad sort of glance at his sandals.

Sakura stopped mid-step. It pained her to see that even after all this time, and even after bringing Sasuke home, something still wasn’t complete here in Team 7. Naruto still felt responsible for Sasuke’s actions. He didn’t deserve that world of guilt and pain. He deserved to be happy.

“It’s not Sasuke, per-say,” Sakura sighed, slowing to walk next to Naruto at the same pace, down the street filled with people rebuilding the village. They were coming around the bend where Ichiraku Ramen’s shop was getting a massive make-over after the destruction. There was a new red counter and high seats, and plenty of ramen for Naruto to devour before the shop even opened again.

She shrugged her shoulders, “Kakashi-sensei came to see me today.”

“He told you about taking a “break”?” Naruto asked, raising his arms for the air quotes, visibly relieved that this was the only thing plaguing her mind. She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. She didn’t want him to believe that he hadn’t completely saved Sasuke. Even if Sasuke himself had become a saint or if he had finally damned himself to the devil, Naruto wouldn’t be able to endure it if he knew people still doubted Sasuke. He would take it as another failure and she didn’t want that for him. She’d already forced him to make a nearly impossible promise before. She wouldn’t do that to him again.

She’d bear this weight on her own, that’s how it was meant to be. Sasuke should no longer be able to cause Naruto any more pain, she had fought too hard to let that continue happening. She would be strong the one. For the three of them.

“Sakura?” Naruto’s face and blonde hair loomed in front of hers. “You in there?” He chuckled, pointing at the imaginary breeze gliding through her empty head.

“I’m here,” she said. “I always am.”

Naruto smiled and after a beat of silence as they strolled down the street, he said, “I know.” With a twist of his leg he turned around to walk in the opposite direction. He put his left hand in his pocket and waved his prosthetic in the air. “I’ll catch you later, Sakura. I should get back to the Hyuga’s. Don’t get too angry with Sasuke. I doubt he could handle your super strength even on a good day.”

Sakura huffed. “As a matter of fact, Sasuke has taken it upon himself to teach me how to fight, as if I don’t already know how!”

Naruto chuckled, stepping towards her again. He leaned in to snub her nose and with a mischievous grin, he said, “Well, you never could fight that well without your chakra enhanced strength,” he began, eyeing her expression for any of the sudden rage he’d gotten used to seeing in her whenever he spoke. “Which of course I think is awesome. But, maybe you could use the practice. Sasuke could definitely use someone to train with, and you know I wouldn’t be his best choice right now,” he said raising his prosthetic as reason enough.

“That’s not the _point_ , Naruto. Sasuke has always thought of me as some weak little girl, who’s just always in the way. Teaching me to fight is just another way to show me that _he’s_ stronger and that _I’m_ weaker.”

Naruto froze with an expression that was a mix of anger and confusion, his brows furrowed down over his eyes. The next instant his expression cleared and he laughed, “Sakura, no one could ever mistake you as weak, and if they are stupid enough to think that, then they’re the fools who are going to get their asses kicked.”

With his hands in his pockets, he bent his head to the side, forcing her to look at him. This close, Sakura was overwhelmed with the clear blue of his eyes, always taking the world in stride, no matter how much pain it dealt out to him. “Never let anyone make you feel inferior, Sakura. Not even Sasuke. He may not realize who he’s dealing with now, but he’ll learn one day, and then he’ll wondering why he did all the things he did.

“Just give him some time, he’ll come around. In the meantime, if he’s teaching you to fight, then you should take it— _let_ him. You’ve got less to lose than he does when he realizes that you’re stronger than you appear. You always were.”

“When did you start saying such wise things, Naruto? It feels like yesterday you were screaming in that forest, begging me to give you food,” Sakura mused. She looked at Naruto now, tall and with a set to his shoulders that told her he no longer carried many of the burdens he had before.

Naruto laughed heartily, running a hand through his blonde hair. “I guess being a war hero puts things in perspective.” He stopped laughing a moment and just smiled. “Funny you should mention that day. I never would’ve guessed in a million years that Sasuke would offer me his food. Sure it was to make sure I didn’t bring down the team, but I think—”

“You think that he actually did it for you,” Sakura gasped. It was an observation, not a question.

Naruto smiled, shaking his head. “No. I think he did it because somewhere deep in his heart the little boy who lost his parents was reaching out for a friend and that was the only way he knew how.”

She searched his eyes to see find that he really meant those words. “You always believed in the best. In everyone,” Sakura said in amazement. “Even when the world shuns you, you would go down protecting it. Why?”

Naruto scratched his head with one finger. “Well, I seem to recall you believing the best in Sasuke just as much as I did. So tell me, why did you? Why did you believe in him, why do you _still_ believe in him, despite everything he’s done?”

Sakura’s breath caught as her mind turned over the question. She set her eyes on Naruto’s with a fierce determination. “Because I don’t believe in _him_. I believe in the hope that one day… things will be better.”

Her blonde haired teammate smiled. “Then you have your answer right there,” he said, before he was off down the street in that familiar gait of his, waving to villagers as he passed them by. She didn’t have a chance to tell him then how grateful she was for his words.

 

 

“You’re still here,” Sakura said while tilting her head, biting her lip, and scrutinizing the phenomenon that was Sasuke sitting on her couch, peering at her over the rim of a bowl of ramen.

He blinked at her. After a long moment, he bit into his ramen noodles, letting the excess fall into the bowl before setting it and his chopsticks on her low coffee table. He opened his mouth to say something and then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he rose from where he sat and shuffled around the table to reach her. His hands were stuffed in his pockets so he gestured with the jut of his chin at the door. “Where else would I be? You’ve been gone all morning.”

“You say that as if my being out actually _affects_ whether you would be here or not,” Sakura said bitterly, sidestepping around him to clean up the mess on the table. She’d been meaning to clean up before he arrived the day before, but she hadn’t had the time between shifts at the hospital and worrying over the whole arrangement.

She was bending over the table to pick up a pile of books when she noticed a photo frame lying on its back next to Sasuke’s ramen bowl. She let out a small gasp when she realized it was the picture of Team 7, when they had still been together over 3 years ago. Sasuke shifted behind her.

Sakura picked up the photo and her pink hair whipped in the air as she turned around. She let out a little yelp as she came face-to-face with him. His eyes widened just a fraction as if he’d been surprised to arrive in this position as well.

Immediately avoiding his eyes, Sakura attempted stepping away, but the corner of the table blocked her legs. She was standing so close to him that she could smell the faint bit of pine on his shirt, and even the charred scent of fire on his skin.

He was always on fire.

Her brow creased. “You lied.”

Sasuke seemed to jolt out of his stupor. His eyes lost their sheen and he dropped his hands back in his pockets and stepped away from her.

The air in front of Sakura seemed to deflate without his heat.

He regarded her with lazy attention, but she could see in his ever-truthful eyes that he was feeling her out, seeing what she knew first before revealing anything himself. He was always so…calculative. She couldn’t tell anymore if this was a trait she admired in him, or _feared_ in him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I could have. But you’re going to have to be more specific about what.”

“You said you’d been here all morning. You lied. I can smell the pine on you. Have you been training without my supervision?” she demanded.

Sasuke’s jaw twitched. “I don’t need your supervision.”

“You wanted it last night,” she argued.

He let out a bitter laugh and then gave her a callous stare. “That’s because you wouldn’t stop annoying me about it.”

_Annoying_. There was that word again. She remembered the years before he’d left Konoha. She’d been so infatuated with him, both her and Ino. Even when she had found out they were on the same team, her obsession with him only grew. But now, every time she tried to think back to, an honest conversation, or a real moment they’d ever shared…she couldn’t think of one. All she remembered was that word: _annoying._ She had never been anything more than an annoying girl to him.

A nuisance.

Sakura was drawn out of her thoughts when she heard a harsh crack. She looked down at her hands and realized she’d been clutching the picture frame so hard that she’d made a crack in the glass that ran down the centre of the picture, right through her large forehead, splitting her in two.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have bothered,” she said exasperated. She dropped the photo on the table with a loud thud and walked out the room.

They mostly started with that picture—her nightmares. The one in the frame on her dining table, the one she’d nearly thought Sasuke had been looking at in…in fondness of the memory of what Team 7 had been in the beginning..

In her nightmare, just like in reality, the glass frame shattered, but not between her bleeding hands, but _instead under Sasuke’s heel, crushed ruthlessly. Her gaze travelled up his frame to his eyes, eyes filled with such scorn, a pure mask of hatred. He spat his words out as if they were a nuisance to even speak, “You are such an_ annoyance _.” And then he plunged his left hand, charged with lightning, into her chest, putting out her life so easily. As if he were blowing out a candle._

Sakura jolted from her pillow, stifling a scream with the back of her hand. She took shattering breaths. Her body dripped in sweat and her skin boiled despite the open window that let in the cold summer night air into her room, scratching at her raw throat. She looked at the clock on her bedside table. _12:00_ _AM_.

She calmed her breath, and pulled the covers off her body to let the cool air bite at her bare arms, neck, and legs. She pushed her matted pink hair off her face and trudged to her room’s attached bathroom to rinse her face.

She studied her reflection in her hazy mirror. She noticed the pale tone of her skin and the redness of her eyes. She held onto the counter with both hands because she feared she would fall under the crushing sadness that enveloped her, that wanted to bring her to her knees.

This hadn’t been the first time she’d dreamed that nightmare. This nightmare had been a reality to her when Sasuke had used his genjutsu to stop her from following him and Naruto during the last fight that took their arms. She’d dreamed of it nearly every night since then. Of Sasuke’s hatred plainly written on his face and hearing the disgust in his voice.

_You are such an annoyance._

Indeed, she was an annoyance to him. Even if that moment had been his genjutsu, it was still something he had meant for her to hear, for her to understand. She had never been able to learn that. Even then, in the moment before he’d stabbed her, she had gone on professing her love for him, a love that he had never cared about. He had never been interested in her nor had he ever cared for her. She’d been a fool that day to believe—even for a fraction of a minute—that what she felt for him would ever have an impact on his decisions.

_What am I doing?_ she thought. Letting Sasuke stay at her house…she was asking for pain, for suffering. Sakura let go of the sink counter and slide to the cold tiled floor, her knees bruising on the impact. She took a deep breath, shivering now when she had just been on a fever only a moment ago.

An image flashed before her eyes. She remembered the picture underneath Sasuke’s heel in the dream. The harsh cracking sound of glass and the crumpling of the printed photo inside. What had they been so happy about in those days? _What would it take to get that back?_

She’d thought for so long that bringing Sasuke back would bring back Team 7, would bring back their happier times.

She’d been wrong.

The moments of happiness had disappeared the moment Sasuke left. And now—whoever he was now—he was just a black hole, void of love, void of care. He’d proven as much with that last mad attempt to kill Naruto.

But why, despite everything he had done. Despite every harsh thing he had said to her or the amount of pain he’d caused their village.

_Why…couldn’t she give up on him?_

Sakura sighed. She’d already given Naruto the answer to this question this morning.

_Because she hoped that one day… things would be better._

She would hold onto that hope as long as she could.

There was no turning back now.


	3. Chapter 3

A quick rap of two fingers on her door startled Sakura into alertness. Her head snapped up and she scrambled off the floor, grabbing a robe and slipping it around herself just as she reached the door. She came to a halt in front of it and took a deep breath. _You are such an annoyance_.

_You’re right,_ she thought, a chilling sense of calm acceptance washed over her. _But I won’t give up on you. I never have, and I won’t start now._

The door opened with a click to reveal Sasuke’s figure clad in his training gear and a slight lift in his eyebrow that suggested he was…surprised.

“Were you sleeping?” he asked as if this were the most confounding question of all time.

Sakura let go of the doorknob and went to the window to shut it. The cold breeze was making her knees shake, but then, maybe it had nothing to do with the cold breeze, and everything to do with the dark-haired boy in her doorway. “Of course I was. What else would you expect I’d be doing at this hour?”

Sasuke remained just outside the door, gauging the space inside as if he were physically incapable of crossing the line where her door shut. He stared at her skeptically and then his expression shifted to one of seriousness. A mask of indifference and nonchalance. She wondered how he had mastered that expression so well. She would have thought the tragedies of his past would make more susceptible to emotion and sympathy, especially towards someone like Naruto who had no parents and lived his childhood without someone’s love.

But Sasuke’s tragedies hardened him, and made him cold inside. Everything that had once carried love was now frozen over with hate. A burning hate that would not dissipate.

But this fire couldn’t simply be put out. It needed to be transformed—rather than a raging storm, it needed to be cultivated into an ember—into a beacon of light for Sasuke to finally see by.

She hoped she had the power to make that change in him.

“I need to train,” he said bluntly.

Sakura nodded. “So, what do you want me to do about that? You seemed perfectly fine with going this morning without me.”

Sasuke took a quick look around the room—at her tangled sheets and open bathroom door with water sloshed on the counter—and then he looked at her directly. “Fine. You can continue to combat your nightmares here if you’d like then. I’ll be outside training.”

And with not so much as another glance in her direction he was gone. Sakura sighed, sagging to sit on her bed. She had no energy left in her, but the indifference in his expression infuriated her. _If he didn’t care whether she came, why was he asking?_

She shrugged off her thoughts and grabbed a fresh set of tights and the now-washed shirt she’d trained in the night before, along with a sweater for the cold, threw them on, and jogged out of the house in order to catch up to him.

 

 

Sasuke didn’t say a word as she walked into the training field, her steps cautious as she noticed he was training with a katana instead of a dummy that night.

He moved with the grace of a lithe animal—feral but calculative and agile in his movements. He attacked the air in front of him with precise power and an intense glare. Sakura watched as the muscles in his arms and back rolled and pulled taut with each of his strikes. He had shorn off his cloak just as he had the night before, leaving his arms bare in the night breeze, leaving Sakura again with the impression that _this_ Sasuke was very different than the one she’d known in Team 7. He was stronger now, which is something he had always desired, but she wondered: What cost had this strength come at?

Wanting to feel the breeze on her skin as well, Sakura let her sweater slip off her shoulders and threw it on the dummy she had practiced on the night before. She passed alongside the wooden stand of weapons and picked up a lightweight katana and swung it into her right hand. She let the blade settle between the base of her thumb and in the centre of her palm, gripping it tight.

Sasuke did not pay her any attention as she walked onto the dais he was sparring on, until she appeared directly in his way, standing behind him just as he whirled around for a stab. The blade stopped mid-air right in front of her heart, in the same place he had stabbed her in the dream.

Funny, how dreams and reality seemed to converge when it came to Sasuke.

“Get out of my way,” he practically growled, obviously surprised by the way she had put herself in danger. His brow wore a crease the Sakura wanted to smooth out with her touch.

“Teach me how to use this,” she declared. She threw the handle of the sword back and forth between her hands and said, “I’ve never been much of a sword-wielder and you seem to know quite a lot. Did Orochimaru teach you how to use a katana like that? You couldn’t have learned it here with Kakashi.”

She said this all with a curious nonchalance, but Sasuke’s expression darkened indefinitely at the mention of his old mentor. His old _evil_ mentor.

He lowered his katana, letting the tip drop to the floor and notch into the wood. He leaned on it as he glared at her. “Haven’t you had enough of this whole me-teaching-you thing?”

Sakura shook her head. “If I’m going to lose sleep to watch over your arm while you train, then you can do me the small indulgence of allowing me to do something _useful_. Besides, you can’t train against a dummy or against the breeze each night, now can you? You’re going to need a sparring partner eventually, and I hardly think anyone in the village would do you the service.”

She waited, gauging his expression as it flickered from anger, annoyance, exasperation, and finally to bitter acceptance. “Fine, hold up your sword.”

Sakura smiled despite herself and held up the sword in a threatening pose, glaring in the distance at what she imagined to be Sasuke’s face as the real Sasuke circled around her, observing her stance. The feeling of his eyes on her was enough to bring blood rushing to her cheeks and lightness to her stomach, but it was a hollow sort of nervousness. She knew he appraised her _not_ as a woman he could ever be attracted to, but as if she were a piece of meat to be examined.

She was jarred out her thought when Sasuke brought his feet slamming against her ankles like he had the previous night. “Your stance is too wide. You’ll blow over with the breeze like that.”

Sakura shuffled, repressing the urge to nurse her wounded ankles, she noticed Sasuke was still making a face. “What else is wrong?” she asked, self-consciously.

“Everything,” he said.

The word was a blow. She knew he’d said it in regards to her stance, but if felt to her as if that one word described everything about her. _Everything about you is_ wrong _._

She wondered if Sasuke knew the impact his words had on her. How many times had he brushed her off like a pest with unkind words as these? How many times had she just come right back to him? The ever adoring fan. His words hurt. But they had never stopped her.

Maybe she was a masochist who enjoyed being tortured by him.

But then again, maybe he was a sadist who enjoyed hurting _her_.

“Your arms are too loose,” he said, stepping in front of her and grabbing her by the forearms, forcing them to flex into a tighter brace for the blade. “Straighten you back.” He barked the order as he arrived by her side, and with a quick motion, took her chin into his hand with a sharp grip. In that brief moment she was barely inches from him, close enough to see the moonlight diffuse in his eyes. Light swallowed into dark. How many times would she get lost in those eyes before she learned her lesson?

“You’re more likely to fight opponents taller than you. Aim your gaze higher,” he said, and for a second his voice sounded tense, but he let go of her immediately after and Sakura shook her head, convinced it was a trick of her mind.

He made her put down the sword and stand normally, to once again take up the proper stance on command. She didn’t get it perfect the first few times, her were shoulders too slouched, or her elbows were jutting out too much, Sasuke was never satisfied. She got lucky on the eleven try, or maybe Sasuke was tired of watching her fail over and over, but he took up stance beside her, ready to move on.

He didn’t praise her for getting it right this time. No ‘good job’ or acknowledgement except moving onto the next stage of training her. But then again, what more did she expect from him?

He mirrored her pose, and then demonstrated three simple strikes forward. She copied him with careful focus, and was relieved when he didn’t scold her or criticize her, but merely continued with the next move.

The rigorous routine continued for the next hour or so, as he led her through move after move, making her perform them over and over until she got them right—or to his very-high standards. Soon she was able to follow a very simple set of moves used when engaging an opponent.

They hadn’t spoken much in that time, except for Sasuke’s occasional barking orders. She gritted her teeth and refused to whine or ask for a break despite the knot forming in her back and the tenseness of her shoulders.

When Sakura was sure she’d fall over from exhaustion, Sasuke slashed to his left, and then pivoted to stand in front of her. She did the same, copying him as she had been this whole time, but did not turn around. He raised his katana level with her heart. “Try the set on me.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “You want me to attack you?”

“What, scared?” he taunted, but the jest didn’t play on his face. He looked almost _bored._

Sakura’s blood boiled. _Fine,_ she thought. _If he wants a fight, he’ll get one_.

She raised her blade with renewed energy and a bucket load of emotions forged into her gaze, all driven by rage.

She didn’t wait for his signal to start, and swung fiercely at him, taking what he taught her and using it against him. The moment she struck, he flicked her sword aside with the side of his own, as if it were a limp ramen noodle, and span around her until he took up stance behind her. She’d barely gotten past the first move of the set before he’d made all of it useless. She needed her opponent _in front_ of her for it to work.

“Your enemies will never let you do things the way you planned. You have to learn to adapt,” he lectured.

She whirled around, swinging her sword with the intent to slash across his shoulder. He caught her sword against his own, pushing against it with the sheer force of his strength. She struggled to hold against his push, inevitably stumbling back under the pressure. He let go, and brought a strike down on her head, in a manoeuver based only on instinct, she lifted her katana at the last second to block his blow.

He pressed on her again, threatening to crush her under his blade. She held firm, but knew she wouldn’t last much longer.

“Why don’t you give up?” he asked. “I’ve got you on your knees.”

He was right, she was breaking under his strength, one of her knees was sinking to the ground. His words sent her blood rushing in her ears, blocking all the sounds of nature around them on this moonlit night.

In a desperate attempt, she stopped holding up against him and ducked under his blade as it barely missed her shoulder, catching a slice of her pink hair. The strands fell like feathers to the ground, holding a shred of Sasuke’s attention He obviously hadn’t expected her move. She was weak and pathetic in his eyes.

With this sudden advantage, she slashed at his right arm, but Sasuke quick as ever, span to catch the blow at the last moment. “Clever,” he mused, “but not clever enough.” Before she realized what he was doing, he notched the tip of his sword on the hilt of her hers, forcing it out of her hand, disarming her. Sakura despised the loud clatter of her blade on the ground even more than the feeling of his sword on her neck, displaying victory.

He stared at her in this position for what seemed like eternity, and she refused to let her gaze fall to her feet like she wanted to. She held his cold, black eyes panting hard as she lifted a chakra filled finger to brush the tip of his sword away from her neck. Sasuke let the katana fall to the ground with hers.

“I think I’ve had enough tonight,” she said, suddenly feeling the tiredness in her limbs and the defeated feeling in her heart. She walked away from him and headed toward the house.

He didn’t say anything, but he appeared next to her instantly, walking in step with her. His hands flanked his sides and his hair shadowed his face so that she couldn’t see his eyes when he said, “Same time tomorrow.”

Sakura rolled her eyes, but she stopped in her tracks when he spoke again.

“Next time,” he began, lifting his head, “I won’t be surprised.”

Maybe it was the fact that it was late at night, or that the moonlight liked transform Sasuke’s face in infinite ways, but for a moment—she could’ve sworn she saw a smirk on that god damn stone face of his.


	4. Chapter 4

A week had passed since Sakura had started learning to fight with a katana.

Despite her initial failings and Sasuke’s apparent boredom during her first lesson—she was growing to be quite the sword-fighter. Sasuke now kept a weathered eye on her during their lessons, no longer aloof but evidently paying attention to her and guiding her through her training.

He was a brilliant teacher—she had to admit. Harsh. Unyielding. But strangely—never cruel. There were some instances when Sakura was certain he would grow angry with her for not getting a set or a position on the first couple tries, but he was patient. If she had to guess—Sasuke was _glad_ for the distraction to teach her swordplay. It kept his mind off the occasional pains that shot through his right arm and reminded him that he was still healing. He would wince in those rare moments and she did him the curtesy of acting like she hadn’t noticed.

Because she knew that those moments made him feel utterly weak. And sometimes, she felt weak too.  

However, those small acts of kindness did not exempt her from practicing with him well into the night. Fortunately, since Sakura was now on “break” from missions according to Kakashi, she was able to spend her mornings catching up on sleep.

It was on such a morning that she lay sprawled on her bed, pink hair a tangled mess, and very possibly some half-dried drool on her chin, when Sasuke knocked ominously on her window in the early morning hour.

She woke with a half-yelled curse, sitting up and pulling her covers up to her nose as she stared at Sasuke. He stood outside the window of her room, hands in his pocket, eyes alight with—well, _sunlight_. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him outside during the day, under the sun. He seemed so nocturnal these days.

“What are you _doing_ out there, Sasuke?” she demanded, seeing no reason why he should have disturbed her sleep when he so thoroughly worked her to death with set positions only a few hours prior on the training grounds.

The window was either soundproof or Sasuke just chose not to answer, but he merely gestured his chin to the forest behind the training grounds, as if saying, _come out and you’ll see._

_Fine_ , she thought.

Within the next five minutes she had made sure three times over that there was no longer any drool on her chin and that she looked decent enough to venture outside.

Upon reaching the training grounds she found Sasuke sitting under a large tree at the edge of the forest with two packs on the ground beside him. He had one leg bent under his arm and the other stretched out. He looked at leisure. Maybe even at peace.

The sight made waking up early utterly worth it.

“Do you plan on telling me what we’re doing out here in the early morning?” she asked as she approached him. She stood awkwardly by the tree, unsure whether she was supposed to sit down or if they were going elsewhere.

She didn’t know if he would ever want her to sit there. In the place next to him.

He stood up, seemingly coming out of his calm. His face recovered its usual unpleasant expression. “Field training,” he declared.

“What?” she exclaimed. “You can’t be serious. We were training just last night!” She very nearly began to complain that she was tired and didn’t want to go, but held her tongue. Complaining and whining was something Sakura from the past would do. Having been through a war and countless battles she didn’t think that behaviour would make Sasuke think any better of her.

“You need more training,” he simply said before shouldering one pack and chucking the other at her. She caught it haphazardly with one arm as he walked into the forest, ducking under branches and stepping over ditches expertly.

Sakura huffed a sigh, shouldered the pack and trudged into the forest after him.

They walked in silence for the better part of an hour. Every time Sakura thought about saying something she found herself holding back her words—constantly worrying. She did not know what to say to Sasuke. Truthfully, she never had.

She could never say the right thing to him. Nothing to comfort him, nothing to draw him out of the prison he’d built for himself in his mind. Everything she said to him in the past in review now seemed frivolous. Unnecessary.

_Annoying_.

So, with the rising sun at her back and the sounds of the forest—of crunching leaves beneath her feet, and the back-and-forth calls of birds—she hobbled along after him, lacking the courage to walk beside him but content to follow behind him wherever he wished to lead her.

Finally, when they stopped before a very small clearing bordered by thin aspen trees that towered over them, stretching far into the sky where Sakura could not see them past the sun, Sasuke threw down his pack and Sakura decided to speak up.

“Please don’t tell me we’re walking up trees again, Sasuke.”

To her surprise, the hint of a smirk tugged at his lips as he looked up at the tree closest to her. He shook his head. “You’d beat me at that anyway.”

Sakura just blinked at him.

It was true. Even when they were younger, Sakura had possessed better chakra control as compared to the two volatile boys of Team 7. She’d made walking up a tree seem easy while Sasuke and Naruto had struggled to do the same.

She hadn’t expected Sasuke to ever mention that experience. And especially not in a way that favoured her.

“We’re here so you can practice fighting multiple attackers and also so you can try using different settings to your advantage.”

Sakura put a hand on her hip and looked at him skeptically. “I don’t see any other attackers in my midst.”

_Besides you of course, Sasuke._

Sasuke nodded. “I would summon shadow clones but I don’t think you’re ready to handle multiple moving attackers yet. Stagnant ones will have to do.” He pushed an arm out wide to gesture the trees. “They will be your attackers and _I_ will teach you how to weave in and out between them while still managing with your katana even in close range.”

“ _Hai_ ,” she affirmed, ever the good student.

 

“Right foot, pivot! Duck! Strike low! Jump! Overhead swing!” Sasuke yelled commands as Sakura danced between the trees, a layer of sweat running over her skin and the trees dangerously starting to seem like real-life attackers.

“Faster!” Sasuke commanded.

Sakura bit down a complaint. _Why don’t_ you _come down here and try swinging your sword around?_

After a moment the commands stopped. She turned to look at him. He wore a blank expression as he picked up his katana in his right hand—the prosthetic—and came to stand before her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What you wanted,” he said cryptically. “I came down here and now I’m going to try swinging my sword around—at you.”

Sakura clamped a hand over her mouth in horror. _Did I just say that out loud?!_

“Yes, you did,” he said and she mentally slapped herself while assuming proper position. Sasuke was all seriousness and she would be the same, there was no time for crushing embarrassment.

“We’re going to move on to using your settings,” he said. “This is different to regular taijutsu fighting on a mission because _now_ —you have a _sword_. It’s in your hands and it’s an extension of you. You must learn to move and evade _with_ it by considering the space it takes up and how you’ll have to adjust the way you move to accommodate it. This can be difficult because sword fighting is not meant to be close range. Other ninjas will often try to use this against you.

“First, I will attack you with my sword and you will use your surroundings to both fight back and also evade me. Then, I will attack you without my katana, and with regular taijutsu instead. You must find a way to keep me at a distance while still making contact with your sword.”

Sakura had barely nodded in affirmation when Sasuke swung at her. She leaped back in surprise, desperately lifting her katana up to defend herself.

“I guess I shouldn’t have expected a warning,” she grumbled, dodging around a thin tree and ducking under Sasuke’s slashing blade.

“Your enemies won’t give you warnings,” he said evenly. Not even out of breath.

Sakura dropped to her knees and slide across the grassy floor, bringing her sword up over her head and holding against Sasuke’s pressure. She gained purchase with one foot and pushed upwards, shoving him backwards. She followed up immediately after by kicking off the side of a thicker tree, flying up over him so that she could swing her katana down over his head.

Sasuke, quick and deadly as ever, caught her sword at the last possible moment, catching her off-balance as she fell back down to the ground. She had fallen backwards on her elbows and would’ve been very nearly sliced in half by Sasuke if she hadn’t twisted to the side bringing her feet up to push at the flat of his katana.

Sasuke laughed.

The sudden and rare sound threw her off focus as she flipped up onto her feet. Sasuke had her immediately shoved up against a tree, his sword pushing against hers deadly close to her neck.

Their shared breaths were heavy between them.

Sakura stared hard at him. A small smile tugged at Sasuke’s lips as if he were actually _enjoying_ this fight. His eyes were alight with—anticipation. Eager to see what she would do next—of how she would surprise him again.

“Admit Sasuke-kun. I’ve gotten much better at this.” Her voice came out as a husk whisper from not speaking for the past while. Sasuke’s face was barely three inches away from hers.

His eyes darkened. “You haven’t called me Sasuke- _kun_ since the war ended.”

Sakura was breathing heavily and she noticed now that Sasuke was too. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes as she said, “I must’ve gotten lost in the moment.”

“That won’t do. You should be keeping your full focus during a fight,” he said with a sly smirk. The next moment Sakura felt pressure against her ribs. She looked down to see a kunai poised to stab under her ribcage and at her heart. “You never know what other tricks your enemies will have up their sleeves.”

Sakura looked back up at him. A strand of his dark hair had fallen over his eyes. She smiled. “Then I guess you aren’t fully focused, Sasuke-kun.”

A look of confusion crossed his face and then dawning realization loosened his features as she pressed the kunai in her left hand firmly into his back.

He smiled then. A real lift of both corners of his mouth—the Sasuke equivalent of grinning like a fool.

She tilted her head up at him and his lips very nearly brushed hers as he leaned in.

They were locked in a deadly embrace. Neither seemed ready to let go just yet.


	5. Chapter 5

“Ha!” Sakura yelled out from the effort to push against Sasuke’s hold over her. He stepped back and let her as she circled around him and went for a low arcing strike.

He deflected, sure enough, and struck back with more force than ever. He was pushing her to her limits. Challenging her.

She wouldn’t back down now.

Sasuke seemed to fly over the grass and fallen leaves, his feet always planted firmly and yet dancing with utter speed to accommodate each swipe of his sword. His weapon was an arcing ray of reflecting light cutting through the still air of the forest. The sounds of their clashing and rebounding swords was deafening to Sakura’s ears.

And then it was if everything was happening in slow motion. One moment Sasuke was deflecting her slashes and jabs with perfect precision, and then the next, when she tried a bold move and struck at his neck, just above the curse seal mark still imprinted on his skin, a spasm went up his prosthetic arm and his sword failed to lift in time to block her.

It was at that last moment as she felt the tip of her sword meet the soft flesh of his neck that she pulled back in terror. Her left foot slide unsurely on wet leaves as she reeled back. The force of her backwards momentum on her ankle ultimately twisting it and making her collapse to the forest floor.

She cried out in pain as the weight of her body slammed down on her ankle. She was sure it was broken now. But she had no time to think on that as she opened her eyes and saw the blood dripping from Sasuke’s neck over his white shirt and painting the brown leaves on the ground crimson.

“Sasuke!” She scrambled towards him. He knelt a few feet away, bent over one knee, his sword plunged deep into the earth to hold him up.

Sakura used her arms to support her weight as she shoved herself across that short distance towards him. She came up underneath him, looking up at him. His face was masked by his dark hair and besides a few beads of sweat on his brow, he showed no outward displays of pain.

Typical Sasuke.

But then she noticed his deadly grip on his katana. His prosthetic seemed to tremble as he clutched desperately onto the handle to hold himself up. Sakura felt her heart grow heavy with remorse.

She spoke with deadly calm despite the panicked beating of her heart and her shortness of breath. “Sasuke, you need to let go of your sword now and show me your neck so I can heal it.”

For a moment she thought he couldn’t hear her, but then he did exactly as she said but remained kneeling on one knee. His eyes met hers with utter blankness. “I’m fine,” he said.

She took a look at his neck to find that he was indeed right—she had managed to reel back before her blade could’ve done any real damage. Sasuke’s neck bore no more than a slight cut, but nothing immediately life-threatening.

She nodded. “Still, let me stop the bleeding and close the wound. We can’t have you bleeding out.”

He didn’t say anything. Sakura didn’t know what else to say, so she simply raised her right hand to his neck, taking hold of the side of it as a mother would before kissing her son on the forehead. She focused her chakra in careful amounts—into her hand and then into Sasuke’s skin and veins, watching as he was knotted back together.

Through the whole process she kept her eyes focused on her hand and didn’t once chance a look at his face. She knew that the blush that has risen to her cheeks was unmistakeable but she couldn’t find it in her to care about whether he saw. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know about her feelings about him. She had told him she loved on more than one occasion—most of which ended in him turning away without regard, and the last of which ended in him killing her in a genjutsu.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she was done healing him. Sasuke’s expression was a mask of impassiveness, but underneath that she could see some flicker of confliction in the set of his brow and the turn of his mouth.

_What’s wrong?_ she wondered and immediately remembered the spasm that went through his prosthetic just before she had cut him. She suppressed a shudder at the possibility of what she could’ve done to him. Of how badly he could’ve been hurt—and by _her_. By the girl who said she loved him. It was indeed not something she’d ever thought possible.

She bit her lip as she stared at his face. Under normal circumstances she would not stare so blatantly at him, especially considering he was returning her gaze equally. But she couldn’t help herself. The look in his eyes was enough to undo her.

She wished she could heal the pain in his eyes. Wished she could’ve stopped the many terrible things that had occurred and not just in this one moment or in the last few years.

She wished she could’ve stopped all the pain he had endured since his parents had died. Since Itachi had died. Since he had left his team behind and appeared lost to her forever.

Even now, gazing upon his pale and drawn face, she wished she could release all the hurt in him with just her touch.

If only things were as simple as that.

She cleared her throat at the sudden quiet and awkwardness. She shuffled back on her hands and Sasuke stood up abruptly.

“We should head back,” he said. The Sasuke who had appeared at her window in the sunlight this morning and the Sasuke who had been fighting with her just now—both were gone, replaced with the ever impassive and unbreakable Sasuke. Always so deeply draw into his mask that sometimes she wondered if he ever took it off, or if everything else had become a mask in comparison and this—the expression void of feeling or care—or dare she say it void of _love_ —had become the _reality_.

Sakura nodded and moved to get up. The resulting pain in her ankle shot up her leg and she suppressed a cry of pain. She managed to make it to her feet with the support of a nearby tree, keeping the weight off her injured foot.

“You can’t walk like that.”

_Thank you, Captain Obvious._

“I’m perfectly aware of that, Sasuke. We just need to get back to the house so I can call Shizune and have her set the bones. If I try to use medical ninjutsu on it now it won’t heal properly,” she explained. A sheen of sweat had collected on her brow from the effort of standing up.

A strange look crossed Sasuke’s face. “Sit down.”

“What? Why?”

He just stared at her.

“Sasuke, I won’t make it down without falling over. Can we please just go back to the house?”

He didn’t say anything. The next moment he had slipped a hand under her knees and another at the small of her back, picking her up with ease for a moment and then setting her on the ground to sit with her legs outstretched.

“Hey!” she called out in surprise. She breathed a sigh as the feeling of his hands on her subsided and he knelt down in front of her, gingerly placing his hands on either side of her swollen ankle.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked out of breath from the pain.

“I’m going to set your ankle. Grab onto something.”

“Wait, Sasuke—”

Her words broke off as he ruthlessly twisted and jammed her ankle back into place—all in one swift movement—without warning.

Sakura bit down hard on her lip, drawing blood, and when she looked down at the ground where her hands laid, the earth had been shattered tenfold by her chakra.

He was examining her ankle as he said, “The splint will have to wait until we get back, but for now this should do for you to heal it, am I right?”

Sakura wiped at the blood on her lip and glared at him. She then bent over her leg and placed her own hands over her ankle, letting her chakra flow into the joint. She sighed with relief as the pain subsided, but the effect on her was draining.

“Better,” she sighed. “Now I just wish I had some ice to make the swelling go down.”

Sasuke looked thoughtful. “There’s a stream just past this clearing.”

She tilted her head up to look at him and then let her eyes scan over her surroundings until she found what she was looking for.

Just within her grasp was a long, thick branch that was about three-fourths of her height. She snatched it up, using it as a support to get up.

Sasuke watched the whole endeavour without a word.

“Let’s go,” she said with noticeable effort.

 

After hobbling along with her makeshift crutch for the better part of ten minutes, they finally reached the stream Sasuke had been talking about.

She had to admit the sight was quite breathtaking. Tucked into an small clearing, free of trees or even trampled, crumpled fallen leaves, the floor was pure soft green grass and the sky above them was a clear baby blue that shone with the light of the sun. A slight breeze travelled through and the stream seemed to glisten and sparkle.

Sakura made it to the stream with a sense of great accomplishment, throwing her head back to drink in the sun and let out a small laugh. Sasuke had trailed a healthy distance behind her the whole way over, but now he had drawn close to the stream.

She purposely ignored him as she lowered herself to the grass and gingerly stretched her foot into the water. The coldness amid the warm sunlight was welcome to her sore and throbbing limb. She sighed with pleasure, closing her eyes.

When she opened them Sasuke no longer stood by the stream, and when she finally twisted around to look behind her, he sat on the grass, sprawled out facing away from the water. After a moment, he leaned back fully, lowering his head onto the grass too, lying there under the sun with a heart of hurt bared at the heavens.

Sakura leaned back on her hands and sighed. “This place is beautiful. How did you know about it anyway?”

Sasuke spoke to the sky. “I found it when I was scouting the nearby area last week. The day Kakashi came to talk to you.”

Sakura paused and turned around to look at him. She had gotten angry with him that day for lying that he’d been home all morning. She’d accused him of going out to train without her, but thinking back on it now—Sasuke had never explicitly _said_ he’d gone to train against her wishes. She suddenly felt ridiculous for reacting so harshly.

Just as she was about to apologize for acting that way that day, wrapped in all her resentment and regret, he spoke in a deadly quiet voice.

His eyes were closed and he didn’t outwardly seem like he was speaking to her, but the words that came out of his mouth like a whisper were ones she would’ve caught from a thousand feet away—

_“Why do you love me, Sakura?”_


	6. Chapter 6

She felt as if lightning had struck the stream before her, electrocuting her every nerve-ending until she was numb to the pain.

But the pain was still there.

_“Why do you love me, Sakura?”_

Why indeed?

Sometimes when her mind happened to wander over the fact, arresting her heart, all she could think of was the foolish obsession of a young girl for the mysterious and handsome boy in her village. For a long time, Sakura had to admit—it had just been that— _an obsession_.

Then what changed?

Perhaps, it was all the hardship and loss she had faced that had turned a silly infatuation to something stronger, deeper—a need to save the one person she felt she’d failed the most. She had already failed Naruto more than once, and while he lived with the guilt of being unable to fulfill his promise to her, she lived with the guilt of letting Sasuke go in the first place.

Still, she couldn’t say it was guilt or pain, loss or need that drove her love for Sasuke. It was the simple, yet complicated feeling that she wanted him by her side.

That was all she ever wanted.

She stared at the stream and the rush of translucent water over her pale feet—it strangely reminded her of how easily Sasuke had slipped away from her, time and time again.

In the past she would have replied to this question with embarrassment and would have stammered out a response that she would realize afterwards had displeased him. Now she just spoke the truth that gnawed at her soul.

“I don’t need a _reason_ to love you Sasuke-kun,” she said, sounding more bitter and forceful than she’d intended. She stared up at the serene cerulean sky, the polar opposite of her tumultuous heart. “I just…do. I _wish_ I knew the reason, because then maybe I could _stop_ loving you. Maybe then I wouldn’t always be waiting for you to return to me, maybe then my heart wouldn’t hurt this much.”

Sasuke was quiet, and Sakura decided with a sense of defeat that it was time they returned to the house. She stood up and so did he. “We should go back, I have to—”  

“Kakashi. He said the same thing,” Sasuke said. “After I used genjutsu on you before the fight with Naruto. He said you wanted to _save_ me.” An icy note entered his voice. “I never _asked_ to be saved, Sakura.”

She felt utterly frozen by his words, but the anger and frustration that rose up in her heart began to crack the ice, unleashing piercing shards at him. “ _Of course_ you didn’t want to be saved, Sasuke! All you ever wanted was to _destroy_ yourself along with everything you’ve ever cared about!”

She rounded on him, struggling with her ankle but still drawing up close enough to him that she could see the perfect rings of his rinneagan. She tried not to fear the power in those eyes, but even more so—she tried not to fear the emptiness in them. “You ran away. That day three years ago— _you_ _ran away_. A brave man leaves his home to protect the people he loves. You were a _coward,_ who ran away because you were _afraid_ of ever feeling love again. Afraid of _losing_ someone again. You turned to anger and fear and revenge, and let those feelings consume you until you couldn’t even recognize yourself. Until you had turned yourself into someone incapable of love, someone who thought he didn’t need love.”

Sasuke was still. He watched her as she stepped closer and brought a hand softly to the side of his face. She was surprised by how right the gesture felt, but even more that he didn’t flinch away. “But you need love, Sasuke. You will always need love. Even if it’s not the romantic kind. You need to let yourself care about people again. That’s the only way you can be freed from the prison you’ve locked yourself in.”

And with that she dropped her hand from his face, cast him one long look, and turned to trudge away. Never looking back, for fear he’d see her tears.

“There is nothing in me worth loving, Sakura. Nothing capable of love.”

She shook her head, still turned away from him, blinking through the tears. “Nothing but you.”

 

 

The trek back to the house was silent and tense. Or at least it felt that way in Sakura’s head, she had no way of knowing what Sasuke was thinking— _ever_.

Despite her ankle she managed to limp her way along and Sasuke surprisingly said nothing about the sluggish pace she set for them. He seemed lost completely in his inner turmoil, staring broodingly at the trees as he lugged the katanas in his left hand and the packs over the same shoulder. He touched nothing with his prosthetic arm, as if still wary of its condition.

Despite this he had picked up Sakura’s pack without a word even though she insisted that she could carry it herself. She supposed it was a practical kindness. She knew never to expect anything more than practical, calculated actions from Sasuke. To believe anything more would be to feed that childish infatuation, to feed the faint hope she still held at the bottom of her heart that somewhere deep, deep down, in some corner of his heart, Sasuke cared for her, maybe even, possibly—but very improbably—loved her.

However, their earlier conversation was proof enough that he didn’t feel any where near the same. He probably saw her affection as an unnecessary complication—an annoyance. Something that held no advantage nor purpose—at least to him.

After nearly an hour of silence, Sakura’s tumultuous thoughts were scattered when Sasuke spoke up again.

“When did you know you loved me, Sakura?”

Sakura’s breath caught. She tripped over her makeshift cane, falling headfirst towards the massive oak three feet in front of her. Fortunately—or fortunately _not_ —Sasuke instinctively reached out, grabbing hold of her wrist and yanking her backwards. Her spine smashed into his chest and while Sakura let out an breath of surprise, Sasuke had the wind knocked out of him.

She heard his brief grunt of pain and surprise, but she was still too bewildered and dazed by what he’d just asked.

“ _When did you know you loved me, Sakura?”_

Apparently, Sasuke hadn’t tired of precipitous questions this morning.

There was something about the question though. In the innocence of the way he’d said it. Careful, but not calculated, cautious but not testing. He was genuinely _curious_ , demanding an answer to make sense of something he so thoroughly could not understand. It was in that moment she truly pitied him. For to live without love, is a fate worse than death.

When he’d asked her earlier if she loved him, there’d been a bitter, and frustrated tone to it. But now…

Something tugged at her heart. A feeling that this time it wasn’t the cold and calculative Sasuke asking the question but the scared and innocent boy who lost the family he loved at too young an age.

Sakura took a deep breath and rotated in his arms. His cold fingers had moved from her wrist to her upper arm when she’d crashed into him and now they left a pale imprint on her skin from how tightly he’d clutched onto her.

He let go.

_Hold onto to me, Sasuke-kun. Lean on me._

_Let me love you._

_Even if it’s only until you can love another on your_ own _._

Despite letting go of her, Sasuke’s gaze held her just as strongly in place. He asked her again: “When did you know that you loved me, Sakura?”

Sakura was probably about a half head shorter than him, so she lifted her chin and beheld him with resolve. “Honestly, Sasuke? I don’t know.”

A flash of confusion crossed his features, but they were quickly reigned back and composed.

She nearly burst out laughing.

“What is it, Sasuke? Did you expect that this would be some kind of idealistic, fantasized love? That I just _chose_ to start loving you on particular day? A particular time? A particular moment? Because it doesn’t work that way, Sasuke. I don’t _chose_ how, or why, or _when_ it happens. I just know that when all of it was set and done, after all these feelings were placed in motion—at the end of it, all I knew was that I had been in love with you for a long time. But what took even longer for me to realize was how I’d been hurting because of it ever since.

“You know what the funny thing is, Sasuke? I didn’t stop myself. No matter how badly I was hurting inside, no matter how many days I cried myself to sleep when you had left, no matter how pathetic and insufficient and _useless_ I felt after you were gone—I didn’t mind. So long as you came back to me, I wouldn’t have cared even if I had to suffer a lifetime. So long as you returned safe, so long as I could see you _happy_ one day—I would have taken any penance necessary.

“And it wasn’t just me. The two of you are so similar, so stubborn—Naruto may have been perhaps even _more_ devastated than I was when you left. When he couldn’t bring you back. When he returned, having failed the promise he made to me, I wished I could take all the words back. I wished I could erase the hurt in his eyes, the powerlessness in shoulders, the way he looked at me but wasn’t _seeing_ me—because he was seeing _you_. Haunted by a friendship he had failed. Haunted that he had failed not _me_ , but _you._ ”

Sakura took a shattering breath. Standing so close to him, she could count the rings in his eye and the scars that lined silver on his neck and collarbone. “So you see, Sasuke. My love isn’t about specifics, or about calculated moves or hidden agendas, or even about _me_. My love isn’t an obsession or a fleeting pass of time, it is _real_. I don’t want to _save_ you, Sasuke. I want to _love_ you—unconditionally. Even if you never feel the same. Even if it amounts to nothing.

“Just let me do that, Sasuke. Just let me love you.”


	7. Chapter 7

The taste of autumn was in the air. Just a touch. The chill air blew against the red-leaved trees and Sakura breathed a sigh as a rosy blush grew in her cheeks to match her hair. The orange and red sun was setting over the water’s horizon while Sakura sat on the edge of the pier with a beautiful dark-haired girl.

“You wouldn’t imagine how oblivious he is,” Hinata smiled, staring at the sun. Sakura imagined that the white-eyed girl could see nothing but Naruto’s bright smile and yellow hair in that sun—while she saw the darkness of Sasuke’s heart in the shadowy waves that lapped at her feet.

“I can imagine,” Sakura laughed, even though she didn’t feel much like laughing, it felt good to let out her held breaths. “He was never the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“True, but there’s no doubt he was always there to get the job done.”

“Look at you, Hinata. Always talking well of your man, while here I am ranting and complaining about Sasuke.”

Hinata turned to her with a sad smile. “I can’t find it in me to curse him. Sometimes I want to cry or shout and hold up a big sign to tell him—show him that I still feel something for him, but then I think even that won’t make a difference if he’s not ready for it.

“I told I loved him during that fight with Pein. In the weeks after, he made no mention of the confession and I understood because there were just so many problems going on. But now…” She broke off with choked back feeling.

“And now, he’s been living with you for weeks and still—nothing.” Sakura said. _I’m in the same boat,_ she thought.

It had been two weeks since that day in the forest when Sasuke had asked his questions and Sakura had given the only answers she could. Since then, all training had ceased. Sasuke’s prosthetic seemed to be hurting him more than he let on but since that day he hadn’t asked her to train with him at all. She supposed it was the for best if she didn’t see him. Obviously he was trying not to lead her on by asking her to join him, but the absolute lack of contact still stung. The last two weeks had felt like a dance, Sakura leaving in the mornings to see Tsunade and beg Shizune to let her help at the hospital despite being on “break” according to Kakashi—and Sasuke, disappearing all night and returning in the early hours of the morning when he thought Sakura was still asleep, and then sleeping late into the day.

She hadn’t been getting much sleep. She was perpetually in a state of half-consciousness at night, trying to sleep but with ears still listening for the moment when Sasuke’s feet would finally glide as barely a whisper on the wooden floor, and the lock on his door would reassuringly click shut. 

She waited for that moment everyday. She could not get a moment’s proper rest without knowing that Sasuke was safe in her home. Every moment before that felt like a state of constant worry, constant fear, that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t return to her. That he had decided to leave indefinitely once again. And those thoughts terrified her.

Because she knew just how true they could be.

“Still no word from Sasuke?” Hinata asked.

Sakura looked up at the darkening cloudless sky, wondering whether Sasuke was looking at the same sight only on the other side of the village. “Silent as the eye of a storm. As always the case with Sasuke it seems.” She laughed. “But I think _I_ might be the storm, because I feel ready to burst.”

“Maybe you should talk to him, Sakura. Ask him what’s going on. You can’t let him train all by himself, you said so yourself. And we both know you’ll blame yourself if something happens to his arm.”

“Since when did you give active advice, Hinata? I thought you were all about watching from afar, and wishing for more,” Sakura jested at her friend, giving a gentle shove of her shoulder into Hinata’s.

The dark-haired girl laughed. “It’s because I know you have much less patience than I do. Besides, I’m starting to think that I should take a chapter out of your book and stop waiting around.” She smiled, and the sight was so bright to Sakura’s eyes, she wished Hinata would do it more often.

“I know I should ask him, but I just don’t know what I would say! I already gave him all his answers, now I feel like all I can do is wait for him to give me _his_ answer. Either he cuts it off clean, or…” She couldn’t even think of the other possibility because to think so would to hope that she had a chance with Sasuke. Hadn’t all these years taught her anything?

“We all try the best we can to be true to our hearts. Give him time, Sakura, and you will get your answer soon.” Hinata reassured her.

_I hope so._

When she returned to the house it was empty as far as she could tell.

The water on the tap had not been shut properly so it dripped, droplet by droplet, keeping time with Sakura’s flitting thoughts. She looked around herself and everything was as it had been when she’d left that morning. Her things lying around in a mess, books on medical research in stacks by the couch, hair clips on the table, and coffee mugs and ramen cups on the kitchen counter.

A wave of sadness rushed over Sakura.

There was nothing that spoke of Sasuke’s presence in the house. Nothing to convince herself that she wasn’t crazy. That she hadn’t dreamt his return. Nothing to give her the slightest hope that he intended to _stay_.

Because Sasuke was never one to leave anything of himself behind.

Like fire, he had burned through her life and her heart, and now like water he slipped through her fingers and out through the cracks.

“What is the point anymore?” she asked herself aloud. She breathed a sigh and dropped her things on the floor. Taking only a key to the house with her, she left to check the training grounds for Sasuke’s elusive presence.

Unfortunately for her, and not surprisingly—he was not there. The grounds too were devoid of any mark of him. Of the boy who had stolen her heart, and of the man who could not return it.

She found herself wandering towards the sparring dummies, running her fingers over the aged wood that had seen rain and shine and her ruthless strikes. “I bet you’ve seen him far more often than I have all this week,” she told the dummy.

She let out a frustrated scream. “What am I _doing_?” she muttered. “Talking to a dummy, that’s what.”

With a huff she sank down behind the open wall of swords that hung on it’s other side, resting her head against the metal mesh. The sun was barely visible over the horizon.

_He’ll no doubt come here at night. I’ll won’t be waiting long._

The distinct _shing_ of a sword being drawn snapped Sakura to consciousness.

The night was pitch-black and the stars were barely visible. _How long have I been sleeping here?_ she thought.

The noise of grunting and panting sounded behind the wall and remembering the sound of the sword, she peeked around the side of the rack with groggy eyes.

Sasuke danced shirtless in the dark with his sword, swinging and slashing, sweating from what seemed like hours of practice. He must have been here much earlier and she had only just woken up.

She watched the arc of his muscled arms and the tension of his shoulders. It was not only an admiration of his form, but of his impeccable swordplay. She would need years of practice before she could achieve an elegance such as that.

Without realizing it, she had moved from behind the wall of swords and had drawn closer to watch Sasuke. Therefore, it was impossible to hide her stifled scream when Sasuke swung his arm in a slash and instead doubled over in pain, falling to his knees. He clutched the wound where his prosthetic attached to his elbow and his face was etched with agony.

At the sound of her gasp, his eyes snapped open and he turned to stare in surprise and anger at where she stood. She watched as he swallowed his pain and stood up with effort. She wanted to rush forward and help him, but she doubted he would appreciate it, the furious set of his jaw told her that he was not happy she was here.

“What. Are. You. Doing. Here,” he asked, grounding out the words between his discomfort.

“I-I was waiting for you here in hopes that we could talk but I seemed to have dozed off…”  she rambled. “Your arm. _Please_ , let me see it, Sasuke-kun.”

His eyes glazed over in detachment. “No. Just…go.”

Sakura screwed her nose up in annoyance. “You can’t just train that hard and expect your arm to be fine! Especially without medical attention!” she yelled. “Sasuke, you need to let me tend to your arm or you’re going to lose it altogether.”

“I don’t want your help.”

Sakura felt the weight of her heart, crush her chest. “Of course you don’t, Sasuke. But you do _need_ it,” she replied. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such distain. All I’m trying to do is _help_ you. Is that so hard a concept for you to accept?”

Sasuke clenched his jaw, his left knuckles turning white where they held on his prosthetic. “You shouldn’t have been here, Sakura. You weren’t supposed to see…this.”

There was something about his voice when he said that. It was soft, but without malice. Almost defeated in tone, as if his plans had gone terribly wrong. A wave of realization flooded Sakura. Her lips parted in surprise.

“You didn’t want me to see you powerless with your arm,” she breathed.

Sasuke’s eyes snapped to her with something like fear that she had figured him out.

She pressed on. Stepped forward. “You don’t want the world to see you as weak, so you hide away in the dark and build yourself until you are lethal as a weapon. You refuse to let anyone see you when you are most vulnerable.”

She had neared close enough to him to put out a hand and touch him. She bared her gaze at him.

Then as if a phantom desire overtook her, she lifted her hand to his chest and laid her palm flat against his stomach, the muscle hard beneath her fingers. Sasuke did not flinch away and breathed a gasp of surprise.

She spoke with clarity. “I am not sorry that I have caught you in this moment, Sasuke.”


	8. Chapter 8

He held her gaze for what felt like forever and then pushed her hand away. Gently, without force.

She let it fall, watching her fingers curl as she tried her hardest to grasp onto her hopes. She took one step back, parting space to breath, forging the distance between them that Sasuke seemed to so desperately need.

He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were trained on the dummy from the first day they’d come there. “You weren’t supposed to see this,” he repeated.

She spread her arms wide, welcoming the onslaught—the wrath of the boy with a will of iron and a heart of steel. “Yet here I am, Sasuke,” she said.

The scar tissue on his arm was red and swollen. Taking a deep breath she placed her fingers over the skin, pressing softly to examine its condition.

For once he didn’t flinch away. Just stood there still, letting her touch his arm.

“You don’t give up,” he said abruptly.

“If I gave up, you wouldn’t have a hand right now,” she said.

He clenched his jaw, as if struggling to grasp words that fled from him like a butterflies in the wind. “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

She tore her gaze from his arm and looked at him. Really looked at him. At the hard ridges of his face and the rings in his eye, at the scowling set to his lips that always drove her insane. There were exactly the same, and yet somehow the man inside was infinitely different in this moment. She wasn’t sure how.

“Then what do you mean, Sasuke-kun?”

He shook his head and pulled his arm away. When his words arrived they were quiet but not unkind. “You don’t give up on people, Sakura. That ramen-slurping idiot may have droves of chakra to spare and a foolish faith in the world that allows him to believe that anyone can be saved, but you…. You’re a smart girl, Sakura. You don’t _have_ to believe in happy endings. You don’t have to put your stake in a lost cause.”

Despite their gentle tone, the words hit like a blow in Sakura’s stomach.

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying, Sasuke?” she demanded, feeling her anger and frustration bubble up inside her. Before she knew it she had pushed Sasuke’s back into the side of the sword wall, pressing her chakra through her hand into his shoulder to keep him in place.

“I told you,” she ground out. “You’re not a cause for me to save. I don’t care about the happy endings or fairy tales—what I care about is _you_ and _me_. Not all the anger and sadness of the past, and not any of your ridiculous notions of the bleak future. I just want you to let me love you in the here,” she said, softening her hold, absently drawing a circle with her index finger over his heart, “and the now, for as long as I can.”

He caught her hand, snatching it like a falling snowflake, and held on. He shook his head, and the moonlight caught his eyes in strange angles, turning them a molten black and then painting a silvery sheen on top. “That’s not what I meant.”

Sakura held her breath, not sure she could think straight with him so close, and her hand in his over his heart.

“I’ll say it again: you don’t give on people, Sakura. But depending on the person you’re considering, that unfailing quality of yours can either be a blessing, or the curse that destroys your life. I have already taken years of your life—Naruto’s life, _my_ life, and so many others—and made them nothing short of ruin. So I am saying, Sakura, you don’t have to let me take more. You don’t _have_ to put your stake in whatever destruction I amount to.”

“Why not?” she whispered.

The corners of his eyes turned down, and she could see it there—his vulnerability, fresh as the peeled moon that night. “Because—if you choose to let me take—I’m not sure I can stop myself.”

A slow smile curved over Sakura’s lips. “Then don’t. There’s not reason to stop. Because I will always give you my love.”

When she pressed her lips against his, he did not stiffen the way she expected him to. Instead, he unravelled, his body unwinding and bounding back to fit around hers as if the fight was finally leaving him, as if he had grown tired of holding his breath for so long, and finally decided to breathe.

It felt like barely a moment of his electrifying scent flaming through her senses when he pulled away, turned away, unable to face her yet still holding her hand like a lifeline out at sea. His shoulders were tense and tight with emotion.

Sakura tugged his hand, but he did not turn. She stepped to his side, placing her fingers against his jaw to make him turn to her. His face was written with confliction and pain; it was the face of a man who desired a love a he did not believe he deserved.

“Don’t turn away. Don’t shut me out. You may be a lost cause and you may believe that all you can create is destruction. Truthfully, you don’t deserve me, Sasuke,” she said, feeling in her heart that the words were right for once. She smiled. “But I, deserve to have you without walls. I want doors, Sasuke, and I want you to keep them open. To me.”

“You don’t realize it, do you?” he asked, a hint of melancholy laughter in his voice. “I could never shut you out. You break through my walls no matter how strong I build them.”

When he leaned into her, the descent was slow, measured and purposeful. His mouth parted her lips with a dangerously lethargic heat that bled through him and surged into her. He filled her with lightning and fire, and she returned it with equal passion.

She didn’t know if Sasuke loved her. He did not say the words. But she did not expect them of him. She did not want them of him. Not now, at least.

He was more to her than three words strung in a cadence of affection. He was more to her than a dream. He was a boy with scars deeper than oceans, and she was a girl with a conviction stronger than stone. Hers was the will to heal him. Hers was the will to love him.


End file.
